Switzerland has not been in a foreign
war of any kind since 1815. This would be astounding, even miraculous,
for any nation. But Switzerland borders Germany. And France. And Italy.
And Austria. And Liechtenstein. Now the Vaduz regime has rarely lashed
out in blitzkrieg in a desperate bid to reign über alles, but all of
Switzerland’s other neighbors have spent their histories invading other
countries.

In addition to the encircling foreign
marauders, Switzerland itself is composed of four different language
groups (German, French, Italian, and Romansh) that get along as well as, well, Germans and French.

The Swiss finalized their no-wars policy of armed neutrality in 1815.
Their decentralized citizen army was good enough to keep them out of
the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, World War I, and other European gang
fights. In 1934, they addressed the looming threat of aerial bombing
by starting a massive civil-defense effort. They maintained their citizen
army and kept out of World War II, even while provoking Hitler by letting
Jews hide their assets in secret Swiss bank accounts. Many Jews only
escaped the Holocaust because they had their money where Nazi tax authorities
couldn’t get it.

Hitler was in fact very provoked by the Swiss. His generals even
got as far as giving the invasion of Switzerland the name “Operation Tannenbaum” and drawing lines on maps for it. However, no
matter how they drew
the lines, they couldn’t
overcome the reality that there were no critical central targets for
mechanized blitzkrieg to disrupt. Every house in Switzerland was a center
of resistance. The Wehrmacht paratroopers couldn’t beat a defense
that covered every square centimeter of the country with accurate rifle
fire, and they knew it.

At the end of World War II, some Russian refugees took shelter in Liechtenstein.
The Soviets demanded they be turned over to the NKVD, and Liechtenstein
blocked them (so occasionally the fury of Liechtenstein
is unleashed, after all). While the United States and Britain helped the Soviets herd millions
of people onto trains to
Siberian death camps, the citizens of Liechtenstein (and its ally Switzerland)
faced down Stalin.

In 1962, noticing that the Cold War world
was not getting any safer, the Swiss started building nuclear shelters.
By the early 1990s, the program was complete. Every home, school, and
business in Switzerland has a blast shelter in the basement, with a
filtered air system. Hospitals have fortified wards, and local governments
have underground command centers. Every citizen is trained in civil
defense and knows where to find a radiation meter and/or gas mask.
If the rest of Europe turns itself to glowing rubble, the Swiss will
spend two weeks playing cards underground and then get back to work.

All this defensive infrastructure also
limits the destructive potential of terrorist attacks. Dirty bombs are
useless against people with shelters and fallout meters. Every citizen
has anti–chemical weapon masks and equipment. Even nuclear bombs would
only kill people in the immediate blast area; survivors would escape
to the shelters. Any attempt to terrorize citizens with Mumbai-style
attacks would be met with the assault rifles and rocket launchers of
every Swiss household.

How much does all this security cost
the Swiss? Not very much. In the 1980s the Swiss spent about $33 per capita annually on civil defense. Since the completion
of the shelter program, they spend less; in fact the Swiss federal government
now leaves all civil defense spending to the cantons. Estimates put
total Swiss military spending at 0.9% of GDP. The US spends 5–6% of
our much larger GDP to achieve almost total vulnerability.

The Swiss solution makes Swiss society
more resilient against other natural or man-made disasters as well.
A reactor meltdown is trivial to a nation that is built to withstand
direct nuclear bombardment. Even asteroid strikes or megavolcanoes are
less threatening to a nation only steps away from shelter and stockpiles.
Whatever the future brings, the Swiss people will face it squarely and
deal with it.

The American Way: Permanent War and
No Defense

As Jon Huntsman said before dropping
out of the primary race, the United States spends about as much as the
rest of the world put together on “defense.” Our on-budget military
spending is around 45% of world defense expenditure. But then we have
a ~$75
billion black budget, a Veterans
Administration budget of $132.2
billion, on-budget foreign
aid of $53.3
billion, and off-budget Federal Reserve
foreign aid in frankly
unbelievable amounts. So
a hundred billion here, a hundred billion there, and we end up spending
as much as all the rest of the world’s armies and air forces put together.

The United States has military programs to address threats that don’t even exist.
We have the F-35 to face the now-defunct Soviet air force, Trident submarines
to launch missiles at now-friendly Russian cities, and aircraft carriers
to fight no one, as no other country is dumb enough to pile $20 billion onto one fragile, indefensible “missile magnet.”

So we must be pretty safe, right? We must have really good anti-aircraft
defenses — oops, no, even civil airliners can just fly right into the
Pentagon, even with lots of warning time. But we must have missile defense,
after all the money we’ve spent? Not so much. We have around 30 interceptor
missiles that protect Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force base — as long
as the enemy promises not to use any decoys or electronic countermeasures. U.S. cities are wide
open to attack by any nuclear power, including the French.

But the only military threat recognized by mainstream media nowadays
is terrorist bombs, delivered by Chevy Suburbans or the UPS man. So
the United States must have a really well-developed civil defense system to protect
citizens against fallout, nerve gas, or biological agents. All citizens
must be well-trained in nuclear, biological, and chemical defense and have their radiation meters,
masks, and protective suits in their car trunks.

Maybe in some alternate universe. In the 2012 United States, the only
civil defense is whatever
people provide for themselves.
Our trillion dollars or so of “defense” money is spent mainly on
serving as mercenaries to the various warlords that we support around
the world. Meanwhile, America herself is the most vulnerable target
in history, full of single-point failure modes, glass cities, and panicky
“Homeland Security” bureaucrats.

A few guys with box cutters caused us to attack ourselves with “security”
measures that cost us many times the expense of the physical damage
of the 9/11 attacks. Then we made a follow-up strike on ourselves by
launching several wars, which cost another $4
trillion or so. That was
our response to losing two buildings.

Americans have to be honest with ourselves. If there were a real attack
against the United States, would we bravely handle it with a stiff upper
lip and recover? Or would our “Homeland Security” apparatus choke
the economy of our country to death in panic, with crazy travel restrictions
and nonsensical strip searches of old women and children? I think the
answer is clear: the United States would cease to exist in anything
resembling a functional state if even one city were seriously attacked.

America Could Be Safer Than Switzerland

Switzerland, of course, is a small, landlocked among other nations with
long criminal records, and it has a smaller military budget than any one
of its potential attackers. The United States has none of these problems. If
we applied the Swiss model, we could ensure that our society, our Constitution,
our freedoms, and most of our people would survive even a major attack.
And if someone thinks you’re certain to survive and hunt them down,
they’re less likely to attack in the first place.

We have technical advantages the Swiss do not. We could expand our missile
defense program and help the other powers to do so as well. No decent
person wants to see the children of Kiev, Mumbai, or Beijing burn in
nuclear fire for some politician’s agenda. A thin defense shield against
rogue missiles for every country that wants it should be encouraged.

We could also have a real air defense against bombers or drones tomorrow.
All we have to do is fly our F-15s home from Saudi Arabia and use them
to guard Washington, D.C., and Peoria instead of Riyadh. Our Patriot missiles
could be placed around U.S. cities instead of scattered around the Middle
East. (Those who doubt the Patriot missile’s effectiveness should
note that it has confirmed
kills in 2003 against an
RAF Tornado and an F-18 Hornet — by accident, of course, but there’s
no doubt they can shoot down planes.)

If our Navy weren’t busy blockading Iran to raise the price of oil,
it could add its Aegis cruisers to defend
our coastal cities. Our naval
forces would still fight piracy and maintain freedom of the seas, but
we don’t need Cold War–size forces in expensive Bahrain bases for
that. As far as pirates go, all we really have to do is allow the merchantmen
to arm themselves.

Of course, if we applied a noninterventionist foreign policy, the number of groups motivated to attack us
would be greatly reduced. Right now, we are involved in most of the
ethnic and religious conflicts around the world. Far too many political
factions would benefit from a distracted and damaged United States.
If an attack were anonymous, how would we retaliate? Last time, we “retaliated”
against a nation (Iraq) that wasn’t even involved in the attack. They
didn’t have WMDs, but what if our next president accidentally lies
us into attacking someone who does? Like
France?

This brings up another Swiss policy: their president can’t launch
wars by executive order. In theory, neither
can ours, and we need to
start applying that theory (and the rest of the rule of law) in practice
again.

The Swiss recipe for peace is simple, but it requires all elements in order
to work.

1. Power must be decentralized so that your own politicians cannot aggress
against other nations. It’s too obvious to need stating, but you can’t
stay out of wars if you keep starting them.

2. Defense must be decentralized as well. The Norwegians also had a
militia system in World War II, but the weapons were piled in central
armories. The Wehrmacht paratroopers dropped right on the armories and
used the Norwegians’ own artillery against them.

3. Defense must be focused on defense and protection of civil society.
Adding your troops to every ethnic and religious conflict on earth is
not going to make your society safer.

Refusing to Face the Real Threat: Bankruptcy and Monetary Collapse

Our national defense debate is taking place in Media Wonderland, where
the United States has infinite resources and there are no costs or consequences for
any action. According to Newt, it’s time for us to spend a few trillion
on a government-run moon base, while Mitt just wants to spend those trillions
on new Mideast wars. These are supposedly the “mainstream” views.
The only noninterventionist candidate is summarily ignored.

Back on planet earth, the United States has an on-budget debt that is larger than
our GDP, and government accountants don’t count Social Security,
Medicare, the prescription-drug benefit, or Federal Reserve bank bailouts.
Professor Laurence Kotlikoff, using CBO figures, calculates the real
U.S. debt at more
than $200 trillion. Our huge
“defense” budget is borrowed
month by month from foreign
powers, hardly a sustainable situation.

If we eliminate corporate welfare and bailouts, get out of our illegal
undeclared wars, reduce and redirect military spending to actual defense,
and free the U.S. economy to recover, the 21st century could
see an American Renaissance. Otherwise, our economy’s fall is inevitable,
and all the king’s tanks and all the king’s planes won’t put it
together again. An America involved in every conflict, with no resources
to support any of them, is the legacy we have given our children.

201203869239 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2Fbwalker%2F2012%2F02%2F01%2Fhow-the-swiss-opted-out-of-war%2FHow+the+Swiss+Opted+Out+of+War2012-02-02+06%3A00%3A00Bill+Walkerhttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D2012038692 to “How the Swiss Opted Out of War”

Very interesting read and this recipe should be the design for every nation. Less military spending means more money for health, education, environment and most of all for the West – paying down debt – which really is our biggest enemy.

i have lived in Switzerland. While their neutral status is easier to preserve for a small country, I mostly admire their federal system of government. Taxes are levied by cities and cantons (states). In fact, the separate cantons wield most of the political authority in switzerland which assures that government does not get out of control. As a result of their federal structure, there is very little corruption or much economic incentive for corruption in switzerland, unlike in our broken country where every politician is bought and paid for at the federal level by big corporations and lobbies…..

in short, swiss elected representatives actually represent their constituents when taking office, not their money masters, and most major decisions are made through popular referendum in each canton, not by an elite group of lawmakers like the roman senate we have here.

truly admirable. something is working right there. we could learn many things from the swiss

Ooops! You just gave the US an angle to see Switzerland as a great threat to the US ways in the world. An enemy, that has to be destroyed on some pretense. Bud don't worry! Anything goes with the self-destroyed American minds.

The real reason for their safety is that they store the Big Boyz stashes. Any attack by one of the Big Boyz would be an attack on themselves where it hurts – their personal pocket book – and on the other Big Boyz.

This takes too rosy a view of Switzerland or of the effectiveness of their defense efforts.

I went to college there a long, long time ago. It's a nice place, well-kept and all, money flows in etc. (And they have effective riot police. No I was spectator, what are you thinking?). But on the other hand … outright paranoia? Economic protectionism? Small-mindedness? Infestation by AdministrationEveryWhere™? Yes, they have it.

Now, as to history .. as usual it's being embellished when looking back, the details being messy.

Could it be that the Axis didn't invade because they had bigger targets / their hands full and some higher-ups noticed that a neutral country in Europe provided vital economic and political links to the Allied countries? You bet.

Jews hiding their money in Swiss bank accounts? For sure. But then again, there were ugly scenes where refugees were turned back to german authorities at border checkpoints (no CNN filming this, and yes, some border guards did the Right Thing) and lots of dépositaires conveniently didn't reclaim their money after the Axis collapse.

Swiss pride themselves on citizen-based defense efforts but in these modern times, where combat no longer consists in going up in the enemy's face with lances and cutting implements, these are of doubtful efficacity. The best they could do is break out the SIGs and the sealed box of cartridges that most are handed once their Wehrpflicht days are over and mount a bit of Iraq-style/Yougoslav-style harrassing and resistance effort. Good enough for some situations, but it looks funnily old-fashioned when killbots can chase you down from beneath the cloud cover.

As for surviving a nuclear/chemical onslaught – I think life in Switzerland would very ugly afterwards, shelter or no shelter. You would have to factor in significant population dieback. This is not a Juché Country. It is economically linked-in with the rest of Europe!

Btw, did you know that the were was a Swiss effort to build the Swiss Bomb? I kid you not. It was abandoned rather quickly though.

Switzerland has a very weak federal government. The many wars America has CHOSEN to fight have enormously strengthened the feds in Washington. This has created a vicious circle. Switzerland has no military-industrial-congressional complex, unlike America. The Swiss have no organized ethnic lobby groups who have a loyalty to a foreign country. The Swiss don't have an open door immigration policy, broken borders, "visa-overstayers" (hello 9/11 terrorists) and anchor babies. It is in fact quite difficult to become a Swiss citizen. Finally the Swiss mind their own business.

!America does have a vibrant missile defense program – for Israelis. Huge sums are being poured into Iron Dome. In Washington, the lives of 300,000,000 Americans are not worth the finger clipping of a single Jew, as explained by Chabad rabbis and other such racists like Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who famously proclaimed recently that Goyim , read you, are created solely to serve Jews. His political party, Shas, is a critical part of the Netanyahu government which leads a cheering American Congress around by its nose. Millions for the defense of Israelis, not one cent to protect Americans

Great article. It all makes sense, is simple, would save us trillions, would solve a whole lot of problems, and would return the US to greatness. And yet, now one in Washington cares. So exactly what is DC doing, what are their aims, or better who are they working for? The establishment does nothing but take one stupid decision after another to ruin this country.

Sounds like it is almost exactly the way the US Constitution says the US should be. Federal government with very few and precisely ennumerated powers. Everything else gets done at the state and local level.

The 'Iraq style harassment' you speak of is predicated on being able to get large numbers of boots on the ground to harass; any invasion of Switzerland would not even get that far.

Switzerland is not very flat (in fact it is very NOT flat) – the terrain is much worse than Afghanistan. Resupp would be unpossible.

If you ask anyone who was in Operation Rock Avalanche (in the Korengal Valley) they would tell you it's impossible to find more-hostile terrain – but trust me, Switzerland is it. In fact compared even with the Kush, the Pech region is relatively flat… Korengal is no worse than the Massif Central in France (another region that would be impossible to invade – by 'invade' I mean "take and HOLD").

The Germans drew up plan after plan to take Switzerland – for no reason other than to fill what would otherwise have been unconquered territory bordering Occupied France, and Italy. But the key determinant of the decision not to invade was that armour – a key element in German "blitzkreig' 3rd-Generation manoeuvre-warfare – was rendered useless by the terrain.

This is the same problem that the US faces in the 'hard' bits of Afghanistan: the moment you get into what LOOK like foothills on a terrain map, you can't reliably run even something as relatively lightweight as an up-armoured Humvee. And in Switzerland your problem srtarts less than 20km from the lake.

But after every sortie the grunts are STILL… behind the ****ing HESCO.

If you can't take and hold ground, you can't ****ing win, yo. Alexander the Great was the first guy who got skooled in Afghanistan – and Hitler may have been a prick, but one thing he did (until the invasion of Russia) was listen to his Generals, who were genuinely good at what they did – which included a deeper study of military history than the "We are so awesome" **** driven down the gullets of the Faithful at West Point and Anapolis.

The "Oh, the Germans had better things to do" trope is bull**** that is only believed by Americans – because the Americans would have been stupid enough to try to take it, had it been (for example) a part of the land they stole from Mexico.

The Yanks – with their idiotic "Exceptionalism" trope – have to believe that there could not be a genuine STRATEGIC reason that prevented taking something that looks so small on a map. (VietNam also looks small – and the topography there is ALSO hostile. Generals have no idea how hard it is to traverse hilly terrain and stay supplied – particularly with WATER).

I think it was back before WWI when the Kaiser – visiting Switzerland – made some vague threat about invading with a million men. It was made clear to him that throwing a million men into Swiss terrain would be self-genocide – because all it would take is for the half-million Swiss mountain-ready sharpshooters to fire twice, then go home.

But people repeat historical mistakes all the time – Auckland's Folly (1839) was the British repeating the error of Alexander and Genghis Khan… the Soviets did the same error 150 years later ("It will be easier than for the Angleski, tovaritsch General: we have AIRCRAFT, after all – what tribesman can stand up to our mighty Hind?".

The Yanks only took 20 years before deciding to **** up in the same way as the Soviets.

Nobody ever learns about not invading Afghanistan.

Oddly enough, the Kraut Generals DID learn about Switzerland, and they also cautioned not to repeat Napoleon's stupidity in invading Russia. (Napoleon started with 400,000 men, and finished with 2000 – a failure so spectacular it resulted in the first EVER infographic – see http://bit.ly/wehTvE )

Hitler over-ruled, and that is what made the Germans lose WWII: had Hitler waited until after he had disposed of the Allied annoyances on his Western front (including pummelling Dunkirk and forcing terms, instead of letting everyone escape unmolested), he could have entered a detente with the Soviets.

It would have been bad times to be a Red Sea Pedestrian in Europe then, but in utilitarian terms… most of the 50 million WWII dead would not be dead.

The Axis didn't invade for several reasons: the Swiss were prepared, with their aircraft in bomb-proof "hangars" in caves, the citizens were armed to the teeth, they had supplied their impregnable Alpine Fortress with food and ammo for a century, and they had moles throughout the Nazi high command. Nobody had a better spy apparatus than the Swiss, and the Germans knew that. The Nazis would have got their asses kicked — and badly, too — no matter when or how they attempted to invade. Even that idiot Hitler realised it.

At the start of WW2, the Swiss actually showed Nazi generals their defences. When one such was being showed one of the Swiss border fortresses, he said to a Swiss soldier, "When we come [notice he said "when" not "if"!], there will be twice as many of us as there are of you. What will you do then?"
The Swiss soldier calmly replied, "We will shoot two times, then go home."
The Nazis never showed up.

This article should be required reading for every American. Most of the general public is willfully ignorant of the truth when it comes to American government outrages. A country cannot remain free and democratic if its people do not arm themselves with knowledge and information.

Any indigenous force can probably defeat an invading army without reguard to it's size or technological superiority . The only necessity is to be tenacious and be willing to take huge losses in fighters. The united states has plenty of firearms and technology (like night vision and gps units) in private citizens hands, but, I doubt very seriously our willingness to live in the woods and take actual real life casualties, killed and wounded friends and family. Lacking that basic ingredient the few dedicated fighters will lack support and be "ratted out" by the collaborators looking for an easier life.

A few years back, the Swiss government had to finally come to terms with the real reason that Germany did not attack Switzerland: The Swiss provided financial services to the Nazi regime throughout the entire WW2, and were materially complicit in the holocaust. In fact, much of the gold that was stolen from — or came out of the teeth of — the jews went through Switzerland, helping to fund the Nazi war effort.

Up until the point that the Swiss government admitted complicity (as part of a settlement of many lawsuits brought by holocaust survivors), the Swiss government had taught its people the myth that the Germans didn't attack because of the incredible might and determination of the Swiss defenses. That is a complete myth and a ludicrous farce, and I can't believe it continues to be repeated today.

It's even worse seeing the various comments here that are drawing policy conclusions from the myth. By failing to fact check the original story, this site has unwittingly contributed to the ignorance of yet another generation.

[…] stay out of all squabbles between other countries. The policy was strict neutrality much like the Swiss have followed since 1815; always ready to defend against invasion but never ready to invade another […]

Switzerland has prevented itself successfully from any kind of invasion because of its neutrality towards all the major blocs of the world through a major part of the history. Switzerland was a loose confederation of German-, French-, and Italian-speak…

as a Brit expat currently living in Switzerland I can vouch for the above – however one important fact is overlooked – Switzerland was NOT neutral during WW2. Nazi gold in Swiss bank accounts – surely thats a myth? NOT true its very very true so the Nazis spared Switzerland as it acted as its banker – nice work Switzerlandhttp://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Silent-Partners-Pur…

However I do give the Swiss credit for recently voting against increase in spending on its air force and in general keeping out of wars

still the population are as paranoid, petty and xenophobic as you could imagine